Nuisance data (also referred to as auxiliary data or dummy data) is used in a communication system for a variety of reasons. For example, a data sector in a communication system can have a capacity of 4 Kilobytes (KB), while there are 3 KB of user data available for storing in the data sector. In such a case, the remaining 1 KB of the data sector is filled with nuisance or dummy data. Thus, the 4 KB data sector has 3 KB of user data and 1 KB of nuisance data.
In various applications, nuisance data have specific bit patterns, to distinguish nuisance data from user data. For example, nuisance data can include only 1s, only 0s, alternating 1s and 0s (e.g., 10101 . . . 01010), or any other appropriate bit pattern. In some applications, it is desirable to exploit specific bit patterns of nuisance data for encoding and/or decoding data sectors.